A weekend in ... Helpston, Northants

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Thousands of rail passengers hurtle past Helpston every day. Just north of Peterborough, the East Coast main line passes within a few hundred yards of the village that won fame as the home of John Clare, the “Northamptonshire Peasant Poet”. He died 150 years ago on May 20 and, after long neglect, is now recognised as one of the greatest nature poets, a man who gave the countryside a voice.

With thin sunlight filtering through the morning mist, my wife and I are driving across that countryside for a weekend that will encompass Clare’s birth (in 1793), marriage and death